New Delhi: The central obsession of President Trump appears to be to bring the US debt from its current level of $36 trillion through collecting that from the rest of the world by tariffs and levies. His latest (unintended) blow to US prospects has been to levy a confiscatory fine of $100,000 on each H1-B visa holder.
Tech companies in the US are run by canny executives who employ foreign workers only because there are not enough citizens to fill the slots. In a world where AI presents both a challenge and an opportunity, a constant stream of innovation and adaptation is needed, and once the H1-B visa program ends as it has, developing that within the borders of the US will become problematic.
Trump appears never to have visited a grocery store in his life, and is clearly unaware that already his policies have sent prices of several household goods shooting up. When the only people he tolerates around him are those who tell him what he wants to hear and not the truth as it is, his administration is in trouble and therefore also the US.
Not that there are no exceptions. Secretary R.F. Kennedy Jr is the first head of his department in a long while who is not in league with Big Pharma, and there are others of a similar bent within his Cabinet. And then there are the Epstein files. The Democrats seem perfectly willing to sacrifice Bill Clinton if they can get access to the files showing which politician present and future took advantage of their proximity to Epstein to ravish underage girls. Whether they were consensual or not, with cash and blackmail being used to force them into having sexual relations with predators old enough to be their fathers or grandfathers.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have loyally sought to fence President Trump from the fallout of the Epstein files. Bondi may look like a Hollywood star and Patel as visually less than spectacular, but underneath their exteriors are two brilliant minds. The time will come when both have to choose between going down with President Trump or parachuting out through the simple expedient of telling the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about the revelations in the Epstein files.
Both the intellectual capacities as well as the survival instinct of Senator Ted Cruz are exceptional, and he appears to be reading the tea leaves right by politely opposing curbs on First Amendment rights imposed by the White House. The US Government is not the Trump Organisation, which can potentially go bankrupt several times over and yet re-emerge as a winner this time around. Don Jr has shown his mettle by standing by his father even when the battle against a vindictive White House seemed lost.
Perhaps the time is coming for the drafting of a Presidential pardon for the US President and those close to him, for a Newsom White House is likely to follow the path of President Biden in being lavish in the use of lawfare to send if not Trump then several of his associates to prison. The personable, ruthless Governor of California appears to be the most probable Democratic challenger in the 2028 Presidential polls.
Vice-President J.D. Vance has the charisma and smarts needed to better Gavin Newsom, but only if he is allowed by the Republican Party to take the reins with at least a couple of years left before the present term ends on January 20, 2029. Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump in 2024 not just because of the sympathy wave created by the lawfare she enthusiastically supported against Donald Trump, but because she showed her true feelings about Biden and those close to him not during the campaign but well after she had lost the polls.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio may privately be regretting not retaining the Senate seat he held, but giving that up for a chance at his present job. For US foreign policy and its interests are being reduced to a smouldering rubble. Saudi Arabia, the staunchest US ally in the Arab world, has in effect given up the US as the losing side in Cold War 2.0 that is being waged by China against US primacy. Qatar seems already to have reached such a conclusion, and the UAE may be next.
Israel is as isolated in the region as it once was before the Begin-Sadat accords took place in 1978 at Camp David. However, alone though it was in the region, Israel remained a match for those daring to attack it, and it is so now for the only Jewish majority state in the world. By its attack on Hamas leaders in Doha, hitherto a sanctuary because of its US military base, the Netanyahu government showed that it cares not a whit for the writ of the US.
The Doha attack was a catalyst for the visible decline in trust in the US as a security partner by the Arab states that were once tied to Washington. As for India, which for some reason not clear to others, the White House has reached the edge of success in what seems to be a campaign by President Trump to drive a military ally of the US back into the neutral camp.
The effort by President Trump to get Lisa Cook to exit the Federal Reserve appears to have more to do with her ethnicity than any reasonable cause. Had there been any, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell would himself have recommended her removal.
Brazil, the largest country in South America, has been hit by tariffs on the explicit grounds that legal proceedings are going on against former President Jair Bolsonaro. Surely a quirky move on the part of the US President.
As for Africa, Trump has claimed the credit even for cessation of hostilities within the Democratic Republic of Congo. A claim that is similar to his claim that it was because of him and not the two sides bilaterally that hostilities between India and Pakistan saw a pause.
The list of evidence that President Trump is living in a world of Alternate Reality is lengthening steadily. Clearly, the Republican majority in the US House and Senate have thus far failed to bring President Trump back to reality. Now only the US Supreme Court stands as an effective obstacle to the chaos being created by the White House.
The nine Justices have an immense, historically significant task on their hands, or else the chaos will continue and the US along with its allies and partners will pay the price.
